Second Circuit Court of Appeals Puts Subpoena on Trump’s Tax Returns on Hold
New York County District Attorney Cy Vance wants the court to fast-track its hearing by the end of the week.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold a subpoena issued by a federal that demanded President Donald Trump turn over his tax returns.
Earlier on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York gave the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to subpoena the returns from Mazars USA, an accounting firm.
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow said Trump and the team “are very pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued a stay of the subpoena issued by New York County District Attorney Cy Vance.”
Now Vance wants the Second Circuit to fast-track the hearing before Friday.
NEW: Now that the court stayed his subpoena, Manhattan DA Vance wants the Second Circuit to fast-track Trump’s appeal to a hearing before the end of the week.
His proposed schedule is here. pic.twitter.com/uIjwlWPhdE
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) October 7, 2019
Vance has a probe into the Trump Organization over the supposed hush payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump has denied an affair and a payoff to Daniels.
Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pled guilty to campaign finance violations. He also told Congress that he handed over the money Daniels and Trump knew about it. He claimed Trump and the organization paid him back the money.
Vance opened a new investigation in September over Cohen’s latest allegations. The district attorney wants to know if “the Trump Organization falsely listed its reimbursement of Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels as a legal expense, which would be illegal under New York law.”
Vance wants Trump’s tax returns from January 2011 to the present.
Marrero did not hold back in his ruling:
Marrero, who was appointed by then-President Bill Clinton, wrote that “the expansive notion of constitutional immunity invoked here to shield the President from judicial process would constitute an overreach of executive power,” and that Trump’s argument essentially claims “that a constitutional domain exists in this country in which not only the President, but, derivatively, relatives and persons and business entities associated with him in potentially unlawful private activities, are in fact above the law.”
—
Marrero ruled that the federal court should abstain from the matter, as the investigation is part of an ongoing state prosecution. Recognizing that an appellate court may take issue with this decision, Marrero sought to explain at length why he was rejecting Trump’s immunity claim and denying the request for an injunction against the subpoena.
In doing so, he even challenged conventional legal wisdom regarding the high hurdles to presidential prosecution.
The judge said it may be Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president, but stressed that the policy derives from Office of Legal Counsel guidance, not established law.
“[T]he theory has gained a certain degree of axiomatic acceptance, and the DOJ Memos which propagate it have assumed substantial legal force as if their conclusion were inscribed on constitutional tablets so-etched by the Supreme Court,” Marrero wrote. “The Court considers such popular currency for the categorical concept and its legal support as not warranted.”
Mazars USA faced a Monday afternoon deadline to hand over the tax returns.
Federal judge decision in M… by DailyMail.com on Scribd
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Comments
My they’re in a hurry to get rid of this Trump fellow. Quite the time crunch they’re under. Wonder what’s causing that?
Meanwhile the Democrat owned Media ignores real news such as this.
“Trump-Supporting Art Gallery Owner Brutally Beaten By Drunken Anti-Trump Youths
Media silence.
The same media that cries and screams about abuse when someone criticizes them simultaneously covers up for their leftist paramilitary’s constant assaults on citizens.”
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=383626
Even as a non-lawyer, I see “…if “the Trump Organization falsely listed its reimbursement of Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels as a legal expense, which would be illegal under New York law.””
And I wonder, “So why in the freak do you pretend to want *nine* years of tax returns?”
(Which of course would all be leaked to the New York Times about five minutes after they were produced.)
Good point –
There are actually two issues 1) whether the returns can be withheld due to the presidency and 2) whether the returns are relevant to the criminal investigation.
While I only did a brief scan of the opinion, there was nothing that I saw that discussed the relevancy of the document request, certainly nothing showing that 9 years could even be remotely relevant.
The second point is that criminal investigations of tax retruns rarely originate by federal prosecutors office, they initially start with a standard audit via the internal revenue service.
I’m not sure how much of Trump’s defense was based on this being a fishing expedition. It seems he relied initially on the “Not while I’m President” entirely.
I would think trumps lawyers did address the issue at some point, since failure to raise the issue at the trial court can prevent the issue from being raised at the appeals stage.
If the destructibility of an item on a tax return is all Vance has, he is not running a criminal investigation, he is a State Official attempting to overthrow a duly elected President.
It’s called “lawfare”
It will be seditious conspiracy to overthrown the government the moment a warrant authorizing the use of force to arrest a sitting President is issued.
Relevancy is generally not a reason to refuse to turn over subpoenaed documents. It’s an investigation at this point and the DA is searching for evidence. Documents (phone records, bank records) get subpoenaed all the time that turn our to have no relevance whatsoever. At some point, it could become an abuse of process, particularly seeking tax records that go back to 2011.
What will be interesting in my opinion is whether the Democratic operatives will be able to keep their mouths shut about what is contained in the tax returns. Grand Jury material is secret and especially sensitive documents such as tax returns. If there are leaks, heads in the DA’s office should roll.
Here’s a clue, Schumer and the DNC, perhaps even Cortez, would have the document dump as fast as they can be scanned. The NYT after that and then on to the net.
So I guess Vance is also going to look at Hillary’s returns that funneled Fusion GPS payments through law firm Perkins-Coie?
It won’t be so simple for you Mr. Vance. Your investigation is not about justice
If Vance wants to play rough there is 18 USC 242 – Deprivation of Civil Rights Under Color of Law.
Vance won’t go there – there are often permanent health consequences for investigators of HRC.
“that a constitutional domain exists in this country in which not only the President, but, derivatively, relatives and persons and business entities associated with him in potentially unlawful private activities, are in fact above the law.”
Fuzzy-minded thinking. In a great many respects the President is indeed above the law . . . but only while he occupies the office of President. After he leaves office he can be harassed like anyone else. The thinking of the Constitutional Convention is actually fairly clear on this. We can guess that they had in mind the struggles between the Stuart monarchs and Parliament, which weren’t yet ancient history to men of the 1790s. The functions of the office were being protected, not the men holding those offices.
Of course they don’t want to hound DJT out of office after he’s left it for more prosaic reasons; the urgent need is to get rid of him earlier. So they make up this rubbish, and throw in the stuff about relatives and business entities to get in a dig at Hunter Biden. I’m surprised anyone with half a brain could honestly fall for this.
Not even relatives and business associates, that’s all squeaky clean.
Stormy Daniels. ffs
apparent missing words marked with “?”
/begin quoted text:
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold a subpoena issued by a federal ? that demanded President Donald Trump turn over his tax returns.
Earlier on Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York gave the Manhattan District Attorney’s office ? to subpoena the returns from Mazars USA, an accounting firm.
/end quoted text
Isn’t there some sort of reasonableness test? Do we investigate the sitting president because of “Stormy Daniels”? No, end of discussion.
The state probably has a right to get these returns for a reasonably enunciated purpose of investigation, maybe some bur not all etc., but the court has the inherent power to take the extraordinary step of demanding, as a condition, that the state waive its sovereign immunity and post an astronomical bond to ensure that the returns will not be leaked and to require the state to agree that if the returns are leaked Trump has blanket immunity from any state prosecution. Let’s see how far that goes.
The usual remedy for violating GJ secrecy rules is contempt of court, not suppression of evidence.
True, but I think we’re all aware that that would not be enforced in this case. The system has become to corrupted for that to be a meaningful deterrent.
Probably right. But it would expose further the left’s “we are a nation of laws” hypocrisy.
It is waaaay past time for the DOJ/FBI to gender up and put a complete law warfare focus on all corrupt politicians. Start with the damn Demoncrats and then move on to the RINOs (a.k.a., the zombie Demoncrat enablers).
I suggest that Trump use the same logic that Dems use regarding the 2nd Amendment. If the 2nd Amendment applies to use of arms that were prominent only at the time the Constitution was ratified, then the court can only obtain documents that were prominent at the time the Constitution was ratified. Since tax returns were not in existence in 1789, then these documents cannot be subpoenaed.
I can’t believe the IRS hasn’t already leaked the returns. They’re just as infested with Obama plants as the intel community. What’s the holdup?
If there was anything in them, they certainly would have been leaked. That they weren’t is a fairly convincing argument that they’re clean.
Bingo
Amazing what President Trump has been able to accomplish despite the lawfare, obstruction, lies, attacks, social media bias and censorship.
For example – the Wall has been underway non-stop almost since Trump took office. He must have called the Army Corps of Engineers on Jan 21, 2017 – because their plans and site evaluations began early in 2017.
As of today – 10/8/19
129.1 miles have been completed
292.75 miles are under construction/contract
That’s a lot of American Steel!!!
For daily total – scroll to bottom of Projects Overview spreadsheet – https://www.trumpwall.construction
Twitter – https://twitter.com/trumpwallconstr
The judge’s anti-Trump bias was readily apparent in the wording of his ruling.